Aktuelles & Neuigkeiten

Public Talk by Yifei Li: "Capacious Capacity" (4th July, 11:00, InIIS 7.2210)

In this presentation on Chinese environmental governance, Yifei Li (New York University) proposes a typology of environmental state capacity and draws from his empirical observations of nearly two dozen environmental or climate capacity-building programs in China.

State capacity is easily one of the most protean concepts in Chinese environmental governance, embodying a seemingly unequivocal virtue while harboring diverse interpretations. In this presentation, Yifei Li first proposes a typology of environmental state capacity and then draws from his empirical observations of nearly two dozen environmental or climate capacity-building programs from 2012 to 2023 in China. Finally, the presentation concludes with a discussion of the mismatch between the supply of capacity-building offerings and the demand for specific capacities from low-level officials. The supply-demand mismatch has significant implications for environmental governance in China.